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Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT

(news.mit.edu)
737 points gnabgib | 1 comments | 20 Nov 24 16:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.307s | source
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jedberg ◴[20 Nov 24 23:46 UTC] No.42199394[source]▶
Or, crazy idea, have the government pay all tuition up front for everyone and then collect an extra .5% on your income tax for every semester you attend (or .33% for every quarter). Obviously you'd have to put some limits on what colleges can charge to get paid from that pool of money.

Then you can't go broke from debt because it's a percent of your income, but it's also not "free" to address those who have concerns with that.

You could apply it to all outstanding school loan balances too. Get your loans paid off in exchange for an extra 4% income tax.

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spacebanana7 ◴[21 Nov 24 00:00 UTC] No.42199504[source]▶
I actually quite like the system we have in the UK.

Graduates pay roughly 9% of their income above £27k towards debt repayment, and the remaining balance is written off after 30 years. Typical tuition fees are just over £9k per year.

This strikes a nice balance between encouraging people to carefully consider alternative non-university careers whilst also not preventing too many people from not being able to afford it.

Note my numbers are approximate because they can vary depending on when & where a person went to university a couple of other factors. Also I do think the system could be slightly improved (especially around maintenance loans) but on the whole has a good structure.

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1. NamTaf ◴[21 Nov 24 15:13 UTC] No.42205052[source]▶
Australia's system is similar, albeit the tuition fees are higher (capped depending on the degree and set by the government). You take out a government-backed loan and which is around CPI and then pay it back at an increasing % based on your income, between I think 1.5% above a certain threshold and 10% by a second, higher one.

There's been some issues with it, but no system is perfect and the thrust of it is aligned with the dual public-private structure that Australia seems to prefer (see also: medicare vs private health insurance).